Monthly Archives: March 2026

maker space: midori-style traveler’s notebook

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I fell down the rabbit hole with some recent videos showing how easy it is to make your own Midori-style Traveler’s notebook and had to give it a try. After watching several YouTube tutorials, I found one from Makesupply which immediately felt like the best one. I can’t recommend Makesupply highly enough – their tutorial was step by step and easy to follow, with a list of recommended suppliers for the materials, and they also offer either printable templates or full acrylic templates for purchase.

I chose to make the pocket size, which will fit a pocket size notebook such as Field Notes. Typically, a leather cover for a notebook of this size will range between $30-$90 depending on how fancy you want to get. I purchased a small roll of leather from European Leather Works for $33 and I will be able to make 3 leather covers out of this roll. Of course, I also had to pay for the elastic bindings as well as investing in a scratch awl, which brought my total cost up to around $60 for the project.

I’m not great at cutting the leather yet – you use an Xacto knife and I was a little hesitant with my cuts, which resulted in a bit of an untidy edge on my first cover. I think, however, since I purchased natural full-grain leather that will age and weather, those edges will wear with time and hopefully just lend to the overall character of the cover.

I made one for myself and one for my daughter, and we picked out our own charms from my supply – I already have a huge stash of beads, charms, clasps, etc. on hand from my beading hobby. Putting each little charm on lobster clasps means we can swap charms out easily and add as many as we like. (I fell down another rabbit hole and made a lot of these, which means I will also be putting some notebook charms into my Etsy shop.)

how was your weekend? the unseasonably warm and wet edition

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How was your weekend? We had some very strange weather here in SE Michigan, even for what is occasionally a month of weather extremes. I can remember heat waves and wind storms and ice storms all occurring in Marches past. Sadly, a tornado touched down in Three Rivers (a little over two hours away from us) with a resulting loss of life.

So Saturday morning was muggy and grumbled with thunderstorms, which was fine with us because we had firm plans to stay in and watch one of the opening events of the cycling season (we are cycling fans here), the Strade Bianche, where wunderkind Tadej Pogacar devastated the field, the same as he did last year (and as he probably will in every race he starts for this year). I tried to make some progress on the kiddo’s bug scarf but the double knitting requires significant brain power and when cycling is on all I can manage is the most mindless garter stitch. So I mostly worked on my Cozy Comfort throw which will be a blanket that the kiddo can take to college.

The kiddo had a lot of homework and a paper to write and was holed up in the library or a coffee shop all weekend, so Brandon and I had an evening out for dinner and drinks. We don’t do this very often – we’re both early to bed folks – and as a result it felt like we were out quite late when in actuality we were home by 9. We set the clocks forward and so we still had energy to cuddle up with some snacks and get started on the Paul McCartney documentary “Man on the Run” (so much bad hair in the 1970’s).

It was a nice weekend together and although we lost an hour, we made the most of it. I hate this time change, being a person who has to adjust to the increased daylight (sort of a reverse SAD). It will probably make me feel a little off-kilter this week. I hope you were all able to enjoy a similarly cozy weekend with friends and family and fill your cups a bit in preparation for another week ahead.

friday files – some recent links & pins

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It’s been a damp and dreary week here in Southeast Michigan and I am sure that we are all looking forward to a weekend where we may potentially hit 60 degrees (even with rain, we’re going to see a lot of people breaking out their shorts and showing off blinding winter-white legs, it’s kind of a Midwest tradition). I have to get my taxes done and I hope to get out for a run – I’ve been itching to get back to it. There’s nothing like being outside in the damp spring, getting my shoes sprung and moving my aging body more. This article made me even more excited about it. Harry and Murakami-san Talk Running

I absolutely love Jenna Park’s Substack and even though I am not an artist like she is, her recent newsletter Start Where You Are really resonated with me.

This week, several pins featuring penny loafers made their way to my boards. I sort of blame that show about JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. I’ve not watched it, but pictures of her are showing up everywhere and it’s caused a bit of throwback fever for her style. I always loved her fashion sense, and in the ’90s when I weighed about 100 lbs I could do a low-cost emulation of her style and sort of pull it off. I had sleeveless black linen dresses and black ankle boots and flared jeans and black turtlenecks and I still find a beautiful white button down shirt to be a never-fail choice (they’ve been ubiquitous in my closet since I was in high school). However, to be frank, in my eyes she and JFK Jr were a toxic hot mess and even her fantastic clothes couldn’t make me like her.

I absolutely love the red socks! Original pin here.
I can’t tell if this is a man or a woman but when the clothes are this good it doesn’t matter one bit. Original pin here.

As always, I hope you are well and happy wherever you are and gratuitous cat picture as a thank you for reading to the end!

how was your weekend? (the one with lots of parentheses)

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How was your weekend?

I had a busy Saturday (for me). I met with my brand new therapist (good and desperately needed in the midst of everything that is going on in our world right now which I don’t mention here) and enjoyed a girls night out with my daughter (excellent). We went to the Basement Burger Bar for messy burgers & fries and then ran across the street, dodging heavy wet snowflakes that suddenly swirled down through streetlights and neon, for a quick aisle scan at TJMaxx. (We ended up scoring a set of Snoopy sheets for her and a new Snoopy blanket for our den. We may have a Snoopy problem around here.)

I haven’t seen a movie in a theater for quite awhile but if there’s some sort of Gothic (or Regency or Victorian) epic sprawl playing, I’m up for it. (I think my last theater trips were for ‘Nosferatu’ and the big screen revival of the 2005 ‘Pride and Prejudice’ starring Keira Knightley’s collarbones.) My daughter was meh on the prospect of ‘Wuthering Heights’ but always likes visiting our retro 1920’s movie house and the idea of snacks and popcorn. She regretted her decision as she spent part of the film with her hands over her eyes and another part weepy (it was Heathcliff riding across the moors to Cathy’s bedside that did her in) despite my whispered protestations that these were really NOT great people and definitely NOT worth feeling sorry for. Her summary review through her muffled sniffles at the end: “Mom, that was two hours of bullshit.”

As for me, I enjoyed the movie much more than I thought I would, despite it being more “fan fiction” than anything else. Pros for me were the amazing costumes for Cathy, which felt very Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, the almost Tim Burtonish set design, and Jacob Elordi. Cons were the romanticism of their toxic relationship, the massive changes from the book, and Margot Robbie. I like her a lot as an actress and thought she and Elordi were well matched, despite some criticisms I read of their chemistry, but for me, her icy and symmetrical loveliness was a miscast.

Sunday was another foray into bread baking. I’ve been nursing my starter “Charlie” for a few weeks, went out of the sourdough gate big and bold last weekend and ended up with a dense and gummy loaf that could have caused severe head trauma if dropped out of a second story window. This weekend I scaled back my expectations and did the easier King Arthur Rustic Loaf. There’s still a lot of room for improvement but Brandon and the kiddo ate several big slabs with butter before it was even cooled properly and gave it thumbs up.

In other news – it’s March! We have made it through the winter.